European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.

29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

HISTORY AS A TOOL FOR SHAPING HISTORY:

THE EXAMPLE OF FEMI OSOFISAN’S WOMEN
OF OWU

Niyi Adedeji
National Examinations Council, Minna, Nigeria

Abstract
The use of history as a robust resource material in the African literary
creativity is as old as the advent of modern African literature itself. This
trend re-affirms the inevitability of the convergence of history and literature.
In the symbiotic relationship, history feeds literature with factual events of
the past the same way literature brings fullness to bear on such facts. Be this
as it may, it is viewed that the use to which history is put by literature has
taken diverse shades under different literary phases and/or canons. While we
have writers, predominantly within the foremost African literary coterie,
whose employment of history revels in the conventional historiography of
“render it and leave it at that”, we also have writers (predominantly in the
emergent radical canon) who employ the resource of history basically for the
purpose of its dialectical dissection. In this connection, this paper seeks to
investigate the radical use to which history is being put by writers of the
latter canon. Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu shall be our representative
literary piece. The thrust is to unravel how the text has employed the
instrumentality of the historical resource of the war in the ancient Yoruba
Kingdom of Owu to vehicle its revolutionary message.

Keywords: History, African literature

Introduction
Across the globe, the relationship between literature and history,
since time immemorial, has been that of inevitable convergence. As an art
that enjoys the universal conceptualisation as a mirror of the society,
literature is at times crafted to mirror in retrospect through a writer’s
deliberate recourse to factual events of the past. Apparently, this is in
recognition of the importance of history to the writer. Philip Bagu reports
David Gordon as capturing this reality thus: “literature sources itself from
such historical events the same way it seeks to affect the social realities of
the present” (The Ker Review 44-55). This view also concurs with Fischer’s

279
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

assertion, contained in Akachi Ezeigbo, that “literature is born of reality and

acts back upon reality” (10). As a further corroboration of the inter-
disciplinary convergence, orthodox historians have also opined that the
events of the past are taken into account for the primary purpose of
connecting them with the present for common good. For instance, Arifalo
contends that “history is part and parcel of the general philosophy of life. It
is concerned with the unity of the past and present, not with the past for its
own sake. In short, history is seen as an unending dialogue between the past
and the present” (qtd. In Eds Oguntomisin and Ajayi 25). With this in mind,
it will not be any surprise having a historical fact as the source or
background for a literary output. The world over, this trend flourishes till
date.
A recourse to a genuine sense of history has revealed that the use of
history as resource material for literary creativity in Africa actually predated
the inception of modern African literature itself. This claim can easily be
validated in the fact that orature which is part and parcel of the African
people’s life has its resources drawn from individual heroic exploits,
communal epochs as well as other events in the histories of the societies. All
of these had existed long before the advent of the literacy culture, the
harbinger of modern African literature. However, while modern African
literature has been a collective beneficiary of the bounteous historical
reservoir, the different canonical leanings kept by different writers who
employ historical resource have influenced such writers’ diverse approaches
to the socio-political and economic purposes such past events are made to
serve. Hence, most of the African literary forerunners who have made use of
historical events exhibit a penchant for merely celebrating the exploits of the
dramatis personae of the epochs. In the circumstance, a celebration of
individual heroism, part of which may even be negative human values,
thrives. This literary paradigm concurs with the ideals of bourgeois
historiography. In this category is Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka (1926) which is a
fictional recreation of the epochal exploits of Shaka, the great king of the
ancient Zulu Kingdom. Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi (1971) is also cast in the
mould; being a dramatic enactment of the Yoruba history as it concerned the
rebellion staged against the then Alaafin of Oyo by his own generalissimo,
Kurunmi. Also, closely knitted to this in history is Wole Soyinka’s Death
and the King’s Horseman (1975) which poignantly dramatises the historical
account of the undue interference of the then white colonisers in the Yoruba
rites of passage particularly with regard to the cultural burial of the Alaafin
in the Old Oyo Empire. The list is long. In all of such works, rather than
delving into the socio-economic dynamics of the issues at stake at the
particular epochs being recreated with a view to cross-examining
contemporary realities, what we have is, in Osundare’s words, “an

280
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

overwhelming nostalgia about the past, a helpless jeremiad about the present,
but hardly a suggestion as to the way out of the wilderness, hardly a vision of
tomorrow” (25).
Coming on the heels of this literary canon are few contemporaries
and many emergent ones whose use of history is from a sharply different
ideological standpoint. The paradigm shift became noticeable when
revolutionary writers came up with works which also draw resources from
the historical reservoir but with a practically radical approach. Such works
employ history like others but, beyond others, do a post-mortem on history
along dialectical lines and even move ahead to show the way forward. In this
wise, their use of history as a literary resource is imbued with a revolutionary
tenor not witnessed in either of the cultural nationalist and critical realist
canons. They heed charges like one posited by Ngugi, in his Writers in
Politics (1981), that “the writer should not only explain the world, he should
change it” (75). Little wonder, while Sembene Ousmane can be cited as the
trail blazer of revolutionary writings that amply drew from the resource of
history among literary forebears in Africa with the publication of his seminal
novel, God’s Bits of Wood (1960), Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is another. His The
Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) is outstandingly in this mould. Our target
writer, Femi Osofisan, features prominently among emergent African writers
whose radical employment of the resource of history is noteworthy. A
leading protagonist of the radical literature in Africa, Osofisan is particularly
renowned for his almost unparalleled experimentations in dramaturgy.
Apart from demonstrating an uncommon skill in the use of history for
its revolutionary effects, he has also excelled as a master metatextualist.
Interestingly, his Women of Owu (WOO henceforth), our sampled text,
enjoys the dual orientation of being a product of history on one hand and, on
the other hand, an artistic creation modelled after a classical literary output,
The Trojan Women (TTW henceforth) by Euripides. Definitely, this especial
background of the text is capable of raising issues. In other words, how has
metatextuality been truly made to bear on the dramatic piece? Are there
allied experiences which have combined to propel the writing of the play and
to make it a true product of history? How is the use of history radicalised in
the text? Needless to stress that a critical attention to these posers shall form
the fulcrum of the discourse in this paper.

Women of Owu and Metatextuality

Set in the early nineteenth century Owu Kingdom of Yorubaland, the
play is a dramatic enactment of the historical reality of the destructive war
imposed on the ancient Owu Kingdom by the combined forces of the other
Yoruba species of Ijebu, Ife and Oyo. To be precise, the actions in the play
are the aftermath effects of the war which had taken the invaders seven years

281
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

of siege to prosecute. While all actions take place within the first two days of
the sack of Owu town by the allied forces, the aftermath experiences are
given expression in the pains and pangs of the war survivors who are mainly
women. The sack is so annihilating that the only surviving male human
being in Owu is Aderogun, the little royal baby (being a grandson of the
already slaughtered King of Owu, Oba Akinjobi) who, strapped to
Adumaadan’s (his mother’s) back, is only awaiting his own death in a matter
of hours in the hands of the conquerors. Just as the real Owu war marked the
end of a monolithic Owu Kingdom in Yoruba history, the play also draws a
conclusion that, consequent upon the war, Owu people become a scattered
species of the Yoruba race. Anlugbua, the god and ancestral father of Owu
Ipole people, finally makes a frantic effort at raising the hope of an already
war-ravaged and despondent Own women when he emotionally predicts that:
Owu will rise again! Not here,
Not as a single city again – ….
I know – but in little communities elsewhere,
Within other cities of Yorubaland. Those now going
Into slavery shall start new kingdoms in those places. (67)
While the plot of the play clearly lends credence to its heavy
dependence on history as resource material, a corollary is its metatextual
orientation. No doubt, the playwright confesses to the contemporary
inspiration from the Iraqi War of the early 1990s consequent upon what the
international community considered an aggressive occupation of the less
powerful but oil-rich Kuwait by Iraq. The alleged affront triggered an
international coalition of forces led by the United State of America which
intervened and subdued the aggressor, Iraq, in a prolonged military action
that culminated in the deposition, arrest, trial and eventual execution of the
then Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, in November 2006 (Journal of the
Literary Society of Nigeria, Issue 4 65). Nevertheless, the play is crafted in
the mould of the classical piece, TTW. As a matter of fact, the similitude of
the material forces that propelled both the actual Trojan War (re-enacted in
Euripides’ TTW) and the actual Owu War (recreated in Osofisan’s WOO) is
obvious. While in TTW, the immediate factor that triggered off the war was
the abduction of Helen (the very beautiful Spartan princess) by Paris (the
Trojan prince) from Sparta and elopement therewith to Troy, the bone of
contention at the immediate level in WOO is the seizure of Iyunloye (Maye
Okunade’s beautiful wife) during one of the raids on Ife by the Owu warriors
and her eventual engagement to Dejumo (the Owu prince). Also, the plots of
both plays are rendered from the point of view of the war vanquished. In
both, the blows of the wars are so devastating that mainly women are left on
the sides of the conquered to be taken captives. The destruction of the
facilities of the defeated sides is nothing but colossal. The desecration of the

282
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

groves of the gods and goddesses, the modus operandi for the sharing of the
noble women caught in the abyss of destruction by the victors, the respective
fates of little Aderogun and Astynax, the respective predictions by Orisaye
and Cassandra, the eventual emotional subdue of the respective war lords
(Maye Okunade and Menelaus) by their lover-betrayers (Iyunloye and
Helen) in the midst of the strong warnings by the respective conquered
queens (Erelu Afin and Hecuba), the annihilating inferno visited on Owu and
Troy by the respective conquerors as well as the eventual departure of the
respective woman-captives, among other features, all combine to lend a
strong credence to the metatextual character of Osofisan’s WOO. All these
combine to bemoan the sorrowful consequences of wars in general and, in
particular, the ignoble fates of those defeated in wars (across the globe).

Deconstructing the Myth of Conventional History

Beyond the metatextual content of WOO, of a great relevance is the
reinterpretation of history by the play. In the author’s note on the play’s
genesis, Osofisan unequivocally hints at this thus: “... it was quite logical
that, as I pondered over this adaptation of Euripides’ play, in the season of
the Iraqi War, the memories that were awakened in me should be those of the
tragic Owu War” (WOO vii). In the first instance, this shows Osofisan as a
writer who imbues his work with a sense of history bearing in mind the
Achebean thesis that for us to dry up very well in our present circumstance,
there is a need for us to know where the rain started to beat us. This is a clear
recognition of the inevitable immersion of literature and history. Eldred
Durosinmi Jones lends his voice to the thesis when he asserts that “the
contemporary writer in Africa is primarily immersed with the African
present; but in getting to grips with it, he like every other social being around
him is heavily dependent on his past” (ALT Vol.11 1). Corroborating that
what has been is ultimately knitted with what is and, by projection, what
might be or what ought to be, Osundare comes out more forcefully in his
figurative assertion that “a writer without memory is like an alphabet without
its letters, a face without a nose. For it is needless to say that it is memory,
which grounds us in history, the root which feeds the manifold branches of
human experiences” (qtd. in Eds Osofisan et al 380). Without mincing
words, literature does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, as articulated by Ngugi,
“it is given impetus, shape, direction and even area of concern by social,
political and economic forces in a particular society” (qtd. in Ed Heywood
23). For literary historians, some of these forces come in form of past events
which are brought to the fore to influence the present. Elsewhere, Ngugi
addresses himself to the propelling force of his incessant recourse to the
importance of the writer’s past. Although addressed to the prose genre, the
import of the view transcends genre boundaries. Sounding emphatic, he

283
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

asserts: “I talk about his past because actually I am interested in the present,
and also talk about his past because I find on the whole that African novelists
especially are quite good when they are dealing with the past” (qtd. in Ed
Ogungbesan 8). Quite instructive here is the attention the writer-critic draws
to the interest in the present via a reflection on the past. In other words, the
literary historian’s recourse to factual events of the past is geared towards
influencing the present. Arguably therefore, the literary artist, on a general
note, is in concurrence with the orthodox historian himself (e.g Arifalo
earlier quoted) who sees history as a means of affecting the present.
Frederick Powicke represents this historical school in his assertion that “the
craving for an interpretation of history is so deep-rooted that, unless we have
a constructive outlook over the past, we are drawn either to mysticism or
cynicism” (qtd. in Carr 103).
At this juncture, the crucial question is: what manners of use abound
in the ways various historical witnesses report factual events of the past in
the bid to affect the present? Put differently, while all historians and/or
literary historians may lay claim to a genuine intention to affect the present,
differences abound in the accounts given of the same events. Particularly,
differences abound in the approaches adopted by different canons of literary
creativity. According to Adewale Adepoju, an orthodox historian, this is “the
burden of the historian” which is traceable to the historian’s bid to dissect
history. In his words,
The burden of the historian is closely linked with the pursuit of facts.
In the contemporary world, he seeks to ascertain what happened in
the past as well as explain how and why it happened. In the attempt
to do this, it has however been discovered that different and even
conflicting or confusing interpretations to the same events are
available to the historian. (Anyigba Journal of Arts and Humanities,
Vol.6 30-31)
To the extent that such differences are noticeable in the approaches
adopted by different categories of writers who have employed history as
their resource material, it can be argued that the differences are ideology
driven. Hence, in the African literary firmament, we have works that
canonise their writers as literary historians but whose articulation of issues
either border on cultural nationalism or, at best, stop at mere criticism of the
situation at stake – the critical realist writers. We also have works by the
other category of literary historians whose use of the factual events of the
past is from an entirely radical paradigm. The writers in this latter category
also criticise like the former; but, beyond the former, they go a step further to
proffer solution to the situation at stake in revolutionary terms – the socialist
realist writers. This is a reinterpretation of history as we have in WOO.

284
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

The Owu War that is brought to bear on the present is given a

dialectical analysis by Osofisan. Just like the critical realist would do, the
playwright has delved into the material and spiritual undercurrents of the
devastating Owu War. But beyond this, the writer prosecutes a radical shift
from the bourgeois historiography of the critical realist canon by asking
fundamental questions which interrogate the material causes as well as the
propriety or otherwise of the war. By so doing, the socio-economic
circumstances surrounding the war are given a dialectical analysis with a
view to coming up with theses that are pro-people. Such theses are pro-
masses to the extent of their capacity to proffer ways out of the quagmire of
senseless wars, wars that profit only the strong in the society. In the cosmos
of the play, immediate and remote reasons are advanced for the declaration
of the war on the hitherto united, peaceful and prosperous Owu Kingdom by
the joint forces of Ijebu, Ife and Oyo under the command of Maye Okunade,
the sculptor-turned-warrior from Ife. As the play opens, we see the god
Anlugbua (the ancestral father of Owu Ipole) in conversation with the two
women who (out of the other surviving women) are sent to fetch water from
the local stream. The conversation reveals the immediate factors for the war.
Probed by an astounded Anlugbua on what has become of Owu city (now in
its smouldering ruins), one of the women – the duo still ignorant of the true
identity of the figure before them – responds:
Yesterday, old man!
For seven years we had held them off,
These invaders from Ijebu and Ife, together
With mercenaries from Oyo fleeing south from the
Fulani forces. They said our Oba
Was a despot, that they came to free us
From his cruel yoke!
So for seven years they camped
Outside our walls, but were unable to enter
Until yesterday, when a terrible fire engulfed the city
And forced us to open our gates. That was how
They finally gained entry and swooped on us …. (my emphasis, 2)
Clearly, the song of liberation struggle on the lips of the invaders is instantly
rubbished as the war events unfold. For instance, it becomes illogical seeing
freedom fighters, which they would want us believe they are, unleashing so
annihilating a havoc on a city they purport to be liberating. A situation where
the life of no male human being is spared calls to question the target-
beneficiaries and, indeed, essence of such a liberation struggle. That the
claim is one which stands no test of time is soon confirmed. In the second
scene, we see woman-captives in broken hearts, bemoaning their collective
plight and the fate that awaits them in the hands of their captors. Their

285
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

exchange which is nothing short of cries of anguish is quite sarcastic and

revealing. Part of it runs thus:
WOMAN: Liars! You came, you said,
To help free our people from a wicked king. Now,
After your liberation, here we are
With our spirits broken and our faces swollen
Waiting to be turned into whores and housemaids
In your towns. I too, I curse you!
ERELU: Savages! You claim to be more civilized than us
But did you have to carry out all this killing and carnage
To show you are stronger than us? Did you
Have to plunge all these women here into mourning
Just to seize control over our famous Apomu market
Known all over for its uncommon merchandise?
WOMAN: No Erelu, what are you saying, or
Are you forgetting?
They do not want our market at all -
WOMAN: They are not interested in such petty things
As profit –
WOMAN: 0nly in lofty, lofty ideas, like freedom -
WOMAN: Or human rights –
WOMAN: Oh the Ijebu have always disdained merchandise –
WOMAN: The Ifes are unmoved by the glitter of gold –
WOMAN: The Oyos have no concern whatsoever for silk or ivory –
WOMAN: All they care for, my dear women
All they care for, all of them, is our freedom!
WOMAN: Ah Anlugbua bless their kind hearts!
WOMAN: Bless the kindness which has rescued us
From tyranny in order to plunge us into slavery!
WOMAN: Sing, my friends! Let us celebrate
Our new-won freedom of chains! (12-13)
Apart from the women’s confirmation of the flimsiness of the excuse
given by the conquerors for the Owu invasion, there is a Marxist streak to the
scenario. The tone of the women signposts a steady development of
consciousness on their part. This tendency which tilts towards a radical
reinterpretation of history is a paradigm shift from what obtains in the
conventional way of playing a historical witness from the perspective of the
dominant ideology.
At the remote level, there is a multiplicity of factors as advanced by
the temporal and spiritual lords in the theatre of the absurd which the war
turns out to be. In other words, there are material and spiritual undercurrents
to the invasion of Owu by the allied forces. While these factors intertwine at

286
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

both spiritual and temporal levels, they are essentially underpinned by

material considerations by the actors in the carnage. It is also discovered that
each of the kingdoms that have networked to form the allied forces has its
own axe to grind with Owu. For instance, the Ijebus are enraged because
Owu had earlier killed many of them in an earlier battle, raided their market
stalls and sold many into slavery (WOO 20). The Ifes are angered because
Owu had earlier waged war against their venerated soil and took away the
popular Apomu market from them (WOO 19). The Oyo factor is premised on
the allegation that Owu warriors had earlier defiled Alaafin Sango’s anti-
slavery order by selling war captives (fellow Yorubas) into slavery (19). A
corollary here is a personal grudge against Owu by Maye Okunade, the
popular Ife sculptor. It is alleged that, during one of the earlier raids by Owu
warriors at the Apomu market, they had seized Maye Okunade’s wife
(Iyunloye) and married her to the youngest Owu Prince, Dejumo. Extremely
angered, the sculptor abandoned his art work and started mobilising forces
agaist Owu. Upon the alignment of the forces, Maye Okunade emerges as
their General. The conversation between Anlugbua and the two women on
the water-fetching mission is quite revealing on this:
WOMAN: Ancestral father, the armies of Ijebu, Oyo and Ife,
Who call themselves the Allied Forces,
Under the command of that demon
Maye Okunade,
Caused this havoc.
ANLUGBUA: Okunade? Not the man I knew? Gbenagbena
Okunade, the one endowed by Obatala
With the gift of creativity, to shape wood
And stone into new forms? The fabled artist
Who also dreamed those arresting patterns on virgin cloth?
WOMAN: The very one! But when his favourite wife,
Iyunloye, was captured and brought here, and given as
Wife to one of our princes, Okunade became bitter, and
Swore to get her back. Shamed and disgraced,
He abandoned his tools and took to arms. And so fierce
Was his passion for killing, that he rose rapidly
Through the ranks, and soon became the Maye!
An artist? He’s a butcher now! (5-6)
The spiritual dimension is factored into the war when the goddess
Lawumi (grandmother of Anlugbua) reveals to the devastated Anlugbua in
their post-mortem conversation that she actually egged on the allied forces
against Owu. To Lawumi, Owu had become carried away by their hitherto
economic prosperity and military prowess that they arrogantly launched
offensive on reverred Yoruba kingdoms and mores. Considered as affront to

287
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

the Yoruba cosmology are the war against the Yoruba ancestral home of Ife
and attendant snatching of Apomu market, the indiscriminate massacre of the
Ijebus and sale of fellow Yoruba (captives) into slavery (18-20). Thus, the
goddess weakens the resilience of Owu to withstand the long siege by the
allied forces by causing a mysterious inferno which forces Owu to open its
gate to the invaders and, in the process, open itself to its very annihilation.
The above factors taken together and juxtaposed with the backdrop of
the Iraqi War (among many other such wars across the globe) which inspired
this artistic and radical recasting of history by Osofisan, it can easily be
deduced that, in virtually every war, there are socio-economic undertones.
Also, there is a crucial need to interrogate the genuiness of the interventionist
bids in many wars across the globe. Even the spiritual dimension brought in
can easily be explained off as riding on the vehicle of other issues that are
essentially foregrounded in man’s materialist tendencies. This is easily
verifiable at two levels. First, we see a sudden twist on the countenance of
Lawumi, the goddess that had hitherto camped with the invaders. This is
upon her realisation that the allied forces are, afterall, not the moderate
arbiter she would want to have in her grouse with Owu. She thus changes
camps and begins the process of mobilising celestial forces against the war
victors (20-22). Secondly, we see Anlugbua making a case for the spiritual
world. In the process, he tries frantically to exonerate supernatural forces
from any blame for the human tragedy. Instead, he deposits all the blame at
man’s door post; blaming the war on man’s inordinate ambition for power
and other material possessions, man’s inability to control his ego and desires
of the flesh given expression in “a senseless quarrel over a woman” (65),
man’s inability to jaw-jaw over their differences instead of taking to arms at
the slightest provocation, lack of consciousness on the part of the toads of
war to understand the dynamics of class relations in wars so as to be decisive
in action against the ruling class, and the general lack of a good sense of
history. All these are brought to the fore as the women’s ritual dance
culminates in the possession of Erelu by Anlugbua during which we have a
serious radical exchange involving Erelu (now Anlugbua’s mouthpiece) and
the chorus leaders (64-66). Even when this climaxes in Erelu’s eventual
death, the god Anlugbua himself mounts the stage with a final statement
which does not only encapsulates the plot of the play but also, very
importantly, illuminates on the ideological direction of the play. His
statement which ends the play runs thus:
ANLUGBUA: Poor human beings! War is what will destroy you!
As it destroys the gods. But I am moved, and I promise:
Owu will rise again! Not here,
Not as a single city again – Mother will not permit that,
I know – but in little communities elsewhere,

288
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

Within other cities of Yorubaland. Those now going

Into slavery shall start new kingdoms in those places.
It’s the only atonement a god can make for you
Against your ceaseless volition for self-destruction.
You human beings, always thirsty for blood,
Always eager to devour one another! I hope
History will teach you. I hope you will learn. Farewell. (67)
Anlugbua’s farewell message is quite instructive. Wars and related
crises across the globe are caused basically by man. As such, it is only man,
and not any metaphysical force, that can settle them or even prevent them
from breaking out. Again, the self-exoneration by the spiritual realm
showcases a form characteristic of Osofisan’s dramaturgy. In the socialist
tradition of the playwright’s literary cosmos, employing the supernatural for
the radical purpose of subversion is a commonplace. In one of his critical
moments, Osofisan himself has the following to say in this regard:
Obviously I may use myth or ritual but only from a subversive
perspective. I borrow ancient forms specifically to undermine the
magic of superstition. All these gods and their pretended inviolability
… one is tired of them. We have been hearing of them for too long.
(Awodiya 20)
Beyond trading blames, Anlugbua’s final word consciously touches
on the radical inclination of the play vis-a-vis the use of history. It is
Anlugbua’s final admonition that history is enough for man to learn from.
However, the history in contention here is not the one that revels in “the
canonisation of terror” (a la Soyinka). Rather, it is one that glorifies the
collective spirit of the people to wrestle free of the shackles of oppression
and exploitation. That is why, earlier on, Anlugbua, through Erelu whom he
has possessed, canvasses a demolition of bourgeois historiography which
distorts facts and celebrates the misgivings of the past as though they were
genuine acts of heroism. The canvas is that such fraudulent histories be
replaced by a people’s history which pursues the cause of the common man
who often bears the brunt of the intra-class squabbles of the bourgeoisie. In
Anlugbua’s words,
A father can only chew for a child; he cannot swallow for her.
If only you had read your history right, the lessons
Left behind by the ancestors! Each of us, how else did we go
Except by the wrath of war? Each of us,
Demolished through violence and contention! Not so?
But you chose to glorify the story with lies! Lies!
Our apotheosis as you sing it is a fraud! (66)
As the speech by Anlugbua recalls, there is an authorial disgust for
the history that is rendered from the point of view of the bourgeois

289
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

hegemony. This is a kind of history that glorifies epochs of individual heroes

and conquered territories. To the extent that a history rationalises wars and/or
crises that do humanity no good at the end of the day, it is condemned in the
play. It can therefore be argued that what we have in WOO is a furtherance
of the thesis accentuated in Osofisan’s No More the Wasted Breed (1983). In
order to achieve a stoppage of unwarranted carnage, the thesis, as handed
down through Anlugbua, calls on the masses who are always war victims to
have a proper sense of history so that they can rise to challenge the bourgeois
hegemony. This is a radical way of intervening in the course of history.
Indeed, this is how people can rise up to intervene in history and change the
unjust social order. This must be because, as noted by Osundare,
…the people who shake the world so, who provoke all this change,
are not the blue blood titans we have grown accustomed to in
bourgeois literature. They are the peasants, the proletarians usually
slotted in for brief “comic relief” in conventional literature. The
writers here give them new dignity, a new purpose, and since they are
usually the “wretched of the earth”, a new will to smash oppression.
They are organised, aware, and united. Therefore, their struggle is
collective; so is their victory – and their heroism. (34)
Osundare’s charge is adaptable to the situation in WOO since it is a
charge on all who are oppressed to be conscious of their plight, be united and
challenge the bourgeois hegemony that seeks to perpetuate their oppression
and exploitation. In the cosmos of the play, the toads of war are essentially
women which is only incidental. In so many other wars the world over, the
peasants across gender boundaries bear the brunt. So, the women in WOO,
being so physically weak, are just symbolic of the proletarian class. Hence,
Anlugbua similarly challenges the toads of Owu war – and, by extension,
toads of any war – to rise up for the purpose of rewriting history from their
own perspective. Let us hear them out:
CHORUS LEADER 2: We did not know, we common folk! Forgive us,
It is the rulers who write history –
CHORUS LEADER 1: It is the hunters who compose the story of the hunt
–
CHORUS LEADER 2: It is the revellers, not the slaughtered cows.
Who record the fable of the feast!
ERELU: Then the deer must train themselves to seize the gun from
Their hunters! The cows to take over the narration of
Their own story. Perhaps
After the punishment that’s coming for you – (66)
Reinterpretation of history for the primary purpose of salvaging the
common man and, by implication, the society is a process. As articulated in
the play therefore, the thesis prescribes that the consciousness of “the

290
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

wretched of the earth” (a la Fanon) be raised so that rousing them for a

collective struggle could be easy and effective. In other words, instead of
wars which celebrate bourgeois heroism, what is needed is revolution which
has the capacity to reorder the dynamics of social relations and which
celebrates collective heroism of the oppressed. For this to be effectively
achieved, proletarian consciousness and unity are essential ingredients. As a
matter of fact, sacrifice will have to attend the struggle. It is this sacrifice that
Anlugbua alludes to while raising the hope of Owu rising again. According
to him, “Owu will rise again” but “not as a single city…but in little
communities elsewhere” (earlier quoted). This prophecy has come to pass in
history because, today, we have Owu-Abeokuta (in Ogun state), Orile-Owu
(in Osun state), etc. Simply put, in the socialist character of the play, it ends
on a note of hope for the downtrodden; in this context, the seemingly
despondent victims of war. There is hope of the eventual proletarian victory.
This will however be hard-won and sweet to the extent of the level of
consciousness and unity galvanised by the oppressed class itself. Finally, it is
in this hope that the interrogation of the bourgeois historiography, the
rewriting of history from the side of the people and, ultimately, the change in
the social order sequentially culminate.

Conclusion
The primordially destructive tendency of any war is the focus of
WOO. Through this, the play preoccupies itself with the need to confront and
reject the conventional lens through which wars and other crises in human
societies are viewed. Because this conventional lens often seeks to
perpetuate the dominant ideology where the “ideas of the ruling class are the
ruling ideas” (a la Karl Marx), the play offers a new lens thus: first, we
should view wars and other crises from the perspective of their victims who
are the dregs of the society; and, second, we should analyse the socio-
economic undercurrents which belie these wars and crises. Through this
radical approach to the diagnoses of wars and other social upheavals, the
play believes, we stand the hope of making proper prescription: that the
toads of war should attain consciousness, get organised, challenge the
bourgeois hegemony that seeks to perpetuate the diminishing of their life,
and, ultimately, change the social order. Being an African adaptation of a
classical piece and with the immediate inspiration coming from the Iraqi war,
this thrust “gives the play both local and universal appeal” (James Dung in
JLSN 65). Finally, through this play, Osofisan has played the role of the
writer as a historical witness. Beyond this, there is a radical leap by the
literary historian because there is a didactic inquiry into the essence of war.
In making a literary harvest of the human tragedy of war, Osofisan asks
questions such as those posed by Ernest Emenyonu – “Why are wars fought?

291
 European Scientific Journal October 2015 edition vol.11, No.29 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

Do wars achieve their declared initial objectives? Who benefits from war?
Who are the toads of war? Who are the innocent victims of war? Is war
inevitable in a human society?” (ALT 26 xi). It is the right answers to these
posers that invariably serve as a prelude to the revolutionary prescription
noted is the play. Invariably, it is the revolutionary prescription which scores
the literary historian as one who is all out to prosecute a radical confrontation
of bourgeois historiography.

References:
Adepoju, Adewale. “The Dilemma of the Historian in the Contemporary
World: Reflections on June 12 1993 Crises in Nigeria”. Anyigba Journal of
Arts and Humanities. Vol. 6 (Dec 2008): 30-40.
Arifalo, S. O. “Historical Consciousness in Pre-Literate Nigerian Societies”.
Eds Oguntomisin G. O and Ajayi S. Ademola. Readings in Nigerian History
and Culture (Essays in Memory of Prof. J.A. Atanda). Ibadan: Hope
Publications, 2002.
Bagu, P. Sunday. “The Relationship between Literature and History: An
Examination of Festus Iyayi’s Heroes”. The Ker Review (A Journal of
Nigerian Literature) Vol. 2 Nos 1&2 (Dec. 2006): 44-55.
Carr, H. Edward. What is History? Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001.
Dung, James. “Echoes of Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu in Jos Sectarian
Crises”. Journal of the Literary Society of Nigeria (JLSN). Issue 4 (June
2012): 62-72.
Emenyonu, N. Ernest. “War in African Literature: Literary Harvests, Human
Tragedies”. Ed. Emenyonu, N. Ernest ALT 26 (War in African Literature).
Ibadan: Heinemann, 2008.
Ezeigbo, T. Akachi. Artistic Creativity: Literature in the Service of Society
(Unilag Inaugural Lecture Series): 2008.
Jones, E. Durosinmi Ed. ALT 11 (African Literature Today, Myth and
History). London: Heinemann, 1980.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. “The Novelist as Historian”. Ed. Ogungbesan,
Kolawole. A Celebration of Black and African Writing. Zaria: ABU Press,
1975.
……………………... Writers in Politics. London: Heinemann, 1981.
Ngugi, James. “The African Writer and His Past”. Ed. Heywood,
Christopher. Perspectives on African Literature. London: Heinemann, 1971.
Osofisan, Femi. Women of Owu. Ibadan: University Press, 2006.
Osundare, Niyi. “The Writer as a Memory of the World”. Ed. Osofisan et al.
Proceedings of International Symposium on African Literature. Lagos:
CBAAC, 1991.
Osundare, Niyi. The Writer as Righter (The African Literary Artist and His
Social Obligations). Ibadan: Hope Publications, 2007.

292